I’ve been writing life stories since I was a distracted fourth grade student in Mrs. Edinger’s class. Multiplication tables couldn’t hold a candle to what was going on in my head. Since then I’ve published articles in numerous papers and am currently working on my first book. To visit my site, please click here.

Posts Tagged ‘college’

It turns out it doesn’t matter if your college-bound kids moves away to a school the distance it would take to toast a pop tart or to a university half way around the world- the growing pains of leaving home remain the same.

My daughter, who will be an assuring 45 minutes away and already “left” for summer term, is back after a brief one-week break and preparing now to head back for the fall.

The days are quite consistent: an odd mix of excitement and nerves, anxiety and empowerment, denial and overthinking about what the whole thing entails. And that’s from the two of us.

She may wake up wanting mommy to fix her a full-blown sunshine breakfast, the kind I used to make when she was seven. I’d quickly fry up an egg and slice pieces of buttered toast into rectangles that I’d then place around it, creating my overeasy masterpiece. If I were truly crafty, I would have, should have, cut out the whites, leaving the yolk as the sun’s core, then floated the whites above as drifting clouds. But my daughter was always so thrilled with my lazy version that I never bothered to upgrade.

Other times I am the one hurridly trying to shove last minute parental lessons down her throat, as if I were Tevye bidding my daughter farewell, never to meet again. “Make sure to make eye contact and say thank you whenever someone holds the door. Don’t forget a firm handshake. Always handwrite a thank you note, I don’t care if everyone else just texts.”

We fight. Constantly. In the parking lot of the supermarket. Rushing to Target for last minute lotions. Or sitting across from each other at the dinner table.

Then clumsily, we find our way back to an apology, always with a hug, a joke, a laugh, a peek at our iPhones to see what the latest craziness has appeared on Twitter. And life goes on.

I had lunch with a friend, who is in the midst of driving her son to college far away, who reminded me with a tinge of fear and an ocean of sadness in her eyes that things will never be the same. We sat and picked on our salads at a café trying to grasp the idea of empty nesting, that not understood identity that hovered very close by, just days away.

“I still have the boy,” I joked to lighten the mood, referring to my teenage son still at home. But we both knew that would not be for much longer. That just as we’d blinked and gone from overwhelmed first-time mothers we now sat, a little worse for wear, staring at our Nicoise, wondering where the hell the time went.

We assured ourselves everything would be okay. One way or another. Because it will. Because it must. Because, as we’ve told each other and our children, we have done our best, perhaps not a perfect job, but what is life without a little imperfection, a little stumbling, a heated argument followed by a heartfelt apology, and of course, a deliciously simple, comforting breakfast. Just remember to always hand write a thank you letter, never send a text.